吃瓜爆料

I have spent over a decade studying musicians at the Mongolia-China border and have a keen interest in ethnic and cultural in-betweenness. With this scholarly orientation, I found myself immediately probing questions about the betweenness suggested by the title of Suleika Jaouad鈥檚 Between Two Kingdoms. 

The meaning of book鈥檚 title materializes as we read about her rapid passage from wellness to illness and follow her harrowing battle with leukemia. After receiving her diagnosis, Suleika finds herself in a world beyond her Swiss and Tunisian heritage, a world that she is able to share with countless people across and outside the country 鈥�  of different races, economic backgrounds, political orientations, and life circumstances 鈥� through her blog and later through her cross-country road-trip.

By Part Two of her book (starting page 199) Suleika offers a direct explanation of the kingdoms hinted by the book鈥檚 title. Citing Susan Sontag (Illness as Metaphor 1978), Suleika defines a dual citizenship that we all carry 鈥� citizenships in the kingdoms of the well and the sick. By the end of the book, however, Suleika discovers that those who travel to the kingdom of the sick often do not ultimately return to the kingdom of the well. Suleika discovers that one of the toughest parts of being a cancer survivor is, as Ned warned her in his letter, the process of re-entering the real world (page 139). Through the book, Suleika gradually comes to grips with the 鈥渋mprints of illness鈥� (page 212) that she will carry for the rest of her life, including changes to her very DNA and painful memories of all she has lost.

Although not describing it in this way, Suleika comes to terms with her transition into a third realm 鈥� what she might call the kingdom of the survivors. 

Through her road trip across the country, Suleika begins the process of coming to terms with this new reality. It is a kingdom that she shares with the people she visits from place to place -- survivors of a wide variety of illnesses and hardships. Writing becomes the means Suleika uses to thread together her three selves 鈥� before, during, and after cancer (page 238). By page 312, Suleika discusses the value of her pain as a pathway to integration and healing and by the final sentence, Suleika admits that no matter where she finds herself landing, 鈥渉ome will always be the in-between place.鈥� 

While the musicians I study use music to make sense of their in-betweenness, Suleika uses her writing to work through her own crossings from wellness to sickness to survivorship. She bravely confronts the ugliest and most unflattering parts of her story, integrating those painful parts with the wisdom gained along her journey. I am moved by Suleika鈥檚 bravery, not just as a survivor, but also as an honest story-teller. As Suleika holds up a mirror to the scars of her passage out of illness, she shows what it takes to take up residence in the kingdom of the survivors, encouraging us to think twice before assuming that those who look well on the outside are stable and permanent inhabitants of the kingdom of the well. She has sparked me to recognize that some of the most poignant in-betweenness we will all experience, at one point or another, will be within the body itself.